I spent my maternity leave in Africa so my children could learn about our roots

This First Person article is written by Thandiwe Konguavi, a journalist at CBC Edmonton who recently returned from a year-long maternity leave. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.

I was sitting in the hot tub at a Toronto airport hotel and getting cold feet. 

Along with my husband, the unborn baby in my belly and our three young children, we were in the first days of our long-planned adventure to live for a year in Windhoek, Namibia. The southwest African country is known as The Land of the Brave; with my baby due in a month, I was feeling anything but. 

Surely if I could give birth safely in Canada, why would it be different in Namibia? In Africa? My paternal grandmother had been a traditional midwife in Zimbabwe, long before I — the third of six children — was born in a hospital in the capital city of Harare in 1987. 

Three years later, my mother, two older siblings and I moved to Canada to join my father in downtown Toronto student housing.

And my connection to Zimbabwe was cut.

This maternity leave in the motherland was as much to teach our children about their African roots as it was for me to reconnect with mine.

Deep roots

I met my would-be husband, a born-and-raised Namibian who came to Canada in his late 20s, at church in Toronto. I asked my share of ignorant questions — "Have you heard of Tupac? Did they play Whitney Houston on the radio in Africa? — and he played along, pretending he had never heard of these icons until I heard him rapping "Dear Mama," word for word. 

We didn't want our children to grow up like me.

As the plane descended onto the Windhoek tarmac, the early February African sun streaming through the window gave me an instinctively warm feeling, as if it was saying "welcome home."  

In Windhoek, my in-laws embraced our children who were right away calling out omo and tandaa, the Otjiherero words for uncle and aunt. We loaded our luggage into a large truck. It was one of many rides our children would take in open-cabin vehicles, the subtropical wind blowing in their braids.  

We quickly settled into our new home for the coming year and one month later, our son Munohange was born there. It was a fast, easy home birth attended by a midwife. What had I been afraid of?

Meanwhile, our daughters were already loving classes at the local public school where they were enrolled in kindergarten and Grade 1. In no time, our oldest was counting, singing and reading in the language of her father's Herero people.

Mother tongue, cultural immersion

As a child, I had spoken Shona fluently until — as my mother tells it — I just stopped talking. When we moved to Canada, I went completely silent — no Shona, no English — until I started preschool. English, which would have been my second language, instantly became my first and only one.

Despite growing up in Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in Canada, I didn't have a teacher who looked like me until Grade 8, and she was the last. I've never had a teacher who didn't need to learn how to pronounce my name.

When my daughters were old enough, I started teaching them to spell shortened forms of their names — Ngari instead of Ngarijapurue, Tjija for Tjijandjeua — because I thought their 11- and 12-letter Herero names would be too difficult for their teachers. 

But here in Africa, for the first time, my children were spelling their full names, supported by teachers for whom the names were immediately familiar. 

What a great privilege my children were experiencing. 

Our home was always filled with nieces, nephews, church friends, and every day was a braai ("barbecue") day, as long as we had the boerewors, steak and drinks. We celebrated birthdays on the coast, ate cake on the beach and wrestled with waves of the salty Atlantic Ocean.

We made regular visits to my in-laws' home in a nearby village, where most days, I'd be awakened by the 6 a.m. sunrise and crow of the roosters to help make the fire for our breakfast tea.

I milked the cows, eventually becoming addicted to the pride I felt carrying back buckets of fresh milk for the morning tea and my mother-in-law's delicious sour buttermilk omaere.

We proudly donned traditional Herero clothes, like the long, flowing ohorokova dress with its accompanying headdress shaped like a cow's horns. The special occasion outfit is worn as a reminder of the genocide of Herero and Nama peoples by Germans in the early 1900s.

Over time, I bought colourful fabric to make African print clothes that I could wear on regular days.  My daughter calls my African print clothes "glamorous." 

When I was growing up, Princess Diana wore the clothes I thought were glamorous.

 A gift of their heritage

As Christmas approached, my sister-in-law Inaa wrote out lines from the gospels of Luke and Matthew, then handed them out for each child in the village to memorize. 

As per tradition, on Christmas Eve, families from across the village met at our homestead. I watched with pride as my children boldly recited their lines from the nativity story in Otjiherero. I also had a part, introducing myself in Otjiherero and drawing applause as I stumbled through my line. "Glory to God in the highest, And on Earth, peace, goodwill toward men!"

And I did feel peace, even as I wondered what my children would retain after we returned to Canada. 

It wasn't long before I had my answer. 

Back in Alberta at my parents' house in January, listening to my daughter speak with her new Namibian accent, my mother teased her: "Wow, you really have a full African accent now." 

My daughter quickly retorted, "I'm African mos." 

I'm African after all.

I'm under no illusions that my children will hold onto their accents, or the language, culture, songs and dancing that they've learned. But as I gave her a high-five in our Edmonton kitchen, I breathed a sigh of relief. 

Mission accomplished.

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